


Rogue of Light: Encounter Your Denizen

by chucklingChemist



Series: Sgrub Snippets [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cetus - Freeform, Gen, Rogue of Light - Freeform, SGRUB, Valeba Medala, fan character, fantroll, the choice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 22:29:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17455490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucklingChemist/pseuds/chucklingChemist
Summary: The Rogue of Light wasn't looking for her Denizen. Yet, here she is, impossibly loud and worse, completely impossible to ignore. Guess there's only one way to end this.





	Rogue of Light: Encounter Your Denizen

**Author's Note:**

> This one was written on 4/13 a few years back to try my hand at writing in second person. Don't think it went too badly personally

Darkness.

You were surrounded, wholly and fully, by darkness.

It encompassed you in this subterranean cave, wrapping you in a chilly embrace with each careful step forward into impossibly still air. You had no idea where you walked, you just did, moving ever forward in one direction. Maybe there were other tunnels, but you couldn’t see them, so forward into the increasing darkness you went, using your other senses to discern your surroundings.

Your footsteps echoed against what you assumed was stone ground, judging by the hardness. Water (at least you _hoped_ it was water, but you couldn’t see) dripped from somewhere - the ceiling, probably - and onto your head in slow, uneven drops. Occasionally, when your foot finds a crevice, your hear your boot splashes in a shallow pool. You couldn’t smell much, nothing except _cold_ and _dark_ and _damp_ and…smoke?

You smell smoke?

The realization catches you off guard. Your foot plants itself on a rock. Except it’s not a rock, your foot continues to move atop something distinctly unlike the stone floor, round and unnaturally smooth against her boot, and clicks. Your breath catches as you grab an arrow and notch it. Blood pumps heavy in your ears as the cave seems to activate around you. Torches along the walls light up stone walls in hazy yellows and oranges. You’re not standing in a cave. Not anymore. You stand on the cracked floor of a wide, circular chamber, right in the center of the solar symbol of your aspect. The ceilings sit high, high enough you can’t see them, you just know they must exist. All you can see is the dripping water that hit you earlier, water coming from nowhere and falling into holes and cracks that make the engravings of the floor.

Then you hear it. No, that’s wrong. You _feel_ it. It vibrates your bones, makes your teeth chatter and your legs turn to jelly… yet comes from nowhere. You couldn’t make out the words initially. Affects only you, yet nothing around you. Are those words? You can’t make out if those are an actual language or horrifying warbles of a beast racking your brain. All you know is the voice - not male, not female but something - and the sharp, intense pain in your head.

_Skaia’s Nightingale_

It comes from nowhere.

But that’s not true. It can’t come from nowhere. That’s impossible.

You steel your jaw and point your bow to the sky, releasing the arrow. You see it disappear off into the darkness.

The voice reels in your head - pissed? Obsessively intrigued? That’s all you could guess. The warbles increase in intensity, but you only the words _attack_ and _hero_ and choice. Rocks fall from the nothing and onto the sun’s rays. You notch another arrow towards the sky and for your target.

The monster, your denizen, flies out of the darkness. It’s big, bigger than you could possibly imagine from what your consorts say, flying around on bat-like wings attached to a titanic, brown serpentine body. You release another arrow and it burrows into a wing. Sparks pulse in teal waves against the creature’s wing, but its flying doesn’t falter.

Another arrow, notched and drawn perfectly. Another wave of words forced into your head. You shut your eyes in pain as your arrow releases and it grazes off the denizen’s body.

More babbling. It’s clearer now. Monstrous, but clear. You shoot a fourth arrow at its wing and it cries out in pain, yet it never attacks. It only flies around as it rambles in your head over and over, something about psychics and light and rogues and choices. You grimace, lowering your bow. At best, this was a boring hunt.

“What are your demands?!”

_Skaia’s Nightingale searches, yet cannot find. The God of Light owns, but cannot give. Skaia’s Nightingale fights and never yields. The God of Light yields and never fights. But which is the god and which is the bird? Are they different? Are they the same? All you know is the fog is to blame._

The denizen flies in and out of the darkness as the voice rattles your thinkpan. You watch it carefully. You don’t trust the denizen, the creature responsible for ruining LOCAR.

You sigh and roll your eyes. “You are the reason this is going on. You fogged the land. Either I cull you or you tell me how to fix.”

_A fix? Does the god fix? Do the nightingales fix? Do they know? Do they break? Do they make? What do they do?_

The nightingale. Your lusus. You are the nightingale. The Rogue of Light. A rogue steals. You do none of what this denizen suggested. “Fine. How do I move the light?”

_A power lost. A beacon found. A beacon lost. A power found. A sun outside. A sun inside. A Choice to be made to find what’s needed. A Choice to be made, but will it be heeded? Can a god be culled? Can a power be learned?_

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you say. Frustration laces your voice and you debate shooting it again in its oversized face.

_A Choice. A Choice. Between knowledge and ignorance. Between what’s wanted and what’s needed. Between comfort and risk. Between–_

“Okay!” you yell. “Give me the knowledge. I don’t care what it takes. If it’s what I need, I’ll do it.”

The warbling stops. Your head clears. Three words echo throughout your head:

_Very well, Nightingale._

The denizen charges straight up into the darkness. You hear a distant crash from the ceiling right as the floor underneath you collapses. There’s barely enough time to throw your bow back in your modus before your falling, falling into the cave underneath, scrambling to grab hold of whatever you can.

You collapse onto the stone underneath with a pained, wordless groan. The rocks, miraculously enough, miss you as they tumble everywhere around you. The fog from outside, that damned silencing fog, rolls in from the hole. And something else. Water. Water crashes into the cave from above, and you’re trapped inside with no way out.

_Tell me when to stop, Nightingale._

You open your mouth to scream an answer, but you can’t. The fog mutes your voice until it’s the barest whisper, lost in the caves.

You scream silently. You thrash wordlessly. The water fills up to your knees, but you can’t find a way to stop it. Your denizen is somewhere above, filling your head with words and nonsense that only makes the pain in your head turn from a dull throb to a sharp, piercing one. Your skull feels as if it’s about to split in two. It’s hard to think, harder than before. All you can think is pain. And yet the water flows inward, up to your waist now. It’s only a matter of time before you drown here, drown in pain and unremembered in the bottom of a cave.

The word _stop_ rattles in your head. It wants to come out. As you look for a solution, a way to get rid of the fog or water, you push the word, hoping maybe that will stop the pain. If you’re going to drown, you’d prefer to do it quietly.

The water moves faster now. It’s up to your chest. It’s harder to search. As the cave fills, it becomes harder to even see where it could be coming from.

Then it happens. You feel the word vibrate your own body as the word stop takes over ever fiber of your being. The pain in your head ceases. Light from the room above surges downward and out, driving the fog away and alighting anew underneath the water. You gasp, audibly and loudly, then let out a sigh in relief. The water stops flowing.

You’re safe.

_The beacon you seek lies not far beyond. Rest, rest, and sing the song to awaken it._

You look up to find your denizen, but it seems to have disappeared. That’s okay, though.

There’s still work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel like listening to me ramble, or wanna see everything I've written that hasn't yet been moved over here, check out my tumblr at chuckling-chemist.tumblr.com!


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